Sidney Perkowitz

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If we’re lucky, Homo sapiens are not the living end.

If we snake through the Anthropocene, our species will accomplish some great things, perhaps even creating newer and more exciting species. They may be like us, but they won’t be us, not in some essential ways. That could happen through bioengineering or space colonization. One way or another, machine superintelligence will likely be involved toward those ends, unless, of course, it pulls the plug on the process and starts one of its own. I believe it will be more merger than hostile takeover, but everything remains possible.

From a piece by Sidney Perkowitz in the Los Angeles Review of Books about Murray Shanahan’s The Technological Singularity: 

Shanahan argues that the obstacles to building such a brain are technological, not conceptual. A whole human brain is more than we can yet copy, but we can copy one a thousand times smaller. That is, we are on our way, because existing digital technology could simulate the 70 million neurons in a mouse brain. If we can also map these neurons, then, according to Shanahan, it is only a matter of time before we can obtain a complete blueprint for an artificial mouse brain. Once that brain is built, Shanahan believes it would “kick-start progress toward human-level AI.” We’d need to simulate billions of neurons of course, and then qualitatively “improve” the mouse brain with refinements like modules for language, but Shanahan thinks we can do both through better technology that deals with billions of digital elements and our rapidly advancing understanding of the workings of human cognition. To be sure, he recognizes that this argument relies on unspecified future breakthroughs.

But if we do manage to construct human-level AIs, Shanahan believes they would “almost inevitably” produce a next stage — namely, superintelligence — in part because an AI has big advantages over its biological counterpart. With no need to eat and sleep, it can operate nonstop; and, with its impulses transmitted electronically in nanoseconds rather than electrochemically in milliseconds, it can operate ultra-rapidly. Add the ability to expand and reproduce itself in silicon, and you have the seed of a scarily potent superintelligence.

Naturally, this raises fears of artificial masterminds generating a disruptive singularity. According to Shanahan, such fears are valid because we do not know how superintelligences would behave: “whether they will be friendly or hostile […] predictable or inscrutable […] whether conscious, capable of empathy or suffering.” This will depend on how they are constructed and the “reward function” that motivates them. Shanahan concedes that the chances of AIs turning monstrous are slim, but, because the stakes are so high, he believes we must consider the possibility.•

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Robinson-Crusoe-on-Mars

I’m firmly of the camp that believes humans shouldn’t currently be involved in space exploration beyond building rockets and robots. There’ll be time for us to take small steps and giant leaps later on, after our machine friends have conducted reconnaissance and at least semi-civilized these alien lands.

But no one is listening to me, as the new Space Race, being waged between private and public entities across the globe, is rushing to plant humans and flags on Mars ASAP. It’s a far cry from 1991, when the revived Life magazine wrote of a 150-year plan to gradually terraform our neighbor with orbiting solar reflectors and other far-flung equipment, making Mars hospitable ahead of our arrival. The due date has clearly been pushed up, complicating what will be a long and lonely trip under any circumstances.

From Sidney Perkowitz at h+:

Making it to Mars won’t be easy. It’s the next planet out from the sun, but a daunting 140 million miles away from us, on average – far beyond the Earth’s moon, which, at nearly 250,000 miles away, is the only other celestial body human beings have set foot on.

Nevertheless, NASA and several private ventures believe that by further developing existing propulsion methods, they can send a manned spacecraft to Mars.

One NASA scenario would, over several years, pre-position supplies on the Martian moon Phobos, shipped there by unmanned spacecraft; land four astronauts on Phobos after an eight-month trip from Earth; and ferry them and their supplies down to Mars for a 10-month stay, before returning the astronauts to Earth.

We know less, though, about how a long voyage inside a cramped metal box would affect crew health and morale. Extended time in space under essentially zero gravity has adverse effects, including loss of bone density and muscle strength, which astronauts experienced after months aboard the International Space Station (ISS).

There are psychological factors, too. ISS astronauts in Earth orbit can see and communicate with their home planet, and could reach it in an escape craft, if necessary.

For the isolated Mars team, home would be a distant dot in the sky…•

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